Saturday, September 3, 2011

So I've been hard at work and school as of late. That makes keeping up this blog hard. So I am going to post some stuff from school here. First thing was something called Lifeless, it is a descriptive paragraph. I was in a dark place and wrote about taking one last look at my fathers dead body. By the way it had to be true, if it hadn't I would have written about zombies. I still haven't gotten back a grade for this yet, but I am sure it's not going to get a good one. But I would like to share it with you all.

Lifeless

The smell of hand sanitizer hung thick in the air; I was the last person out of the small darkened hospital room. It would seem that I am one for self punishment, but I had to take one last look at my father’s body. The strongest man I knew, was now just an empty pale shell of himself. His skin, a bluish green tint, pulled so tight on his face from the daily dialysis; it was stuck in the beginnings of a perpetual yawn. Both eye sunken in, the lids clung to the lifeless surface. Only a tiny rim of green could be seen around the endless black pupils that now dominated both orbs. A fading trail from his left eye to the pillow was the only sign of moisture that seemed to be left in his shriveled body. His nose, now slightly purple on the tip, long and pointed, lead to his forehead that held no lines. Which made it seem as if he was made of porcelain. I ran my hand over his short brown hair, that had just been cut to the way he liked it. Cold seemed to radiate from his skin. The question mark shaped scar from the brain surgery just a month before, could barely be seen on the right side his head. I couldn’t help but wonder what the fight for the last month had seemed like from his point of view; as I head out the door saying my last goodbyes to a man who was already gone.

Sunday, August 14, 2011

Well on Monday I start my first day of school. It's weird how much brighter things seemed five years ago when I first tried the college thing. Everyone was alive, and I don't mean in the sense of liveliness. These last five years have brought about so many changes and not many that I have been to happy with. All the jobs I went through, the pain, the deaths and the failure. When I was younger I wouldn't have thought so much change could happen in five years.

Of course there has been good, my marriage, friends and getting published. But it's shocking that bad things do tend to out weigh the good. So I guess I am going to have to set out and let nothing else bad happen over the next five years. I need to get my schooling done and more writings published.

Friday, July 15, 2011

Something weird has happened after getting published, I'm afraid of the next time that I do. I know that is weird but it is what is going on in my mind all the time. I mean on one side I can't wait to see my name on the cover of a book or once again in the table of contents of an anthology. Then there is that part of me that wonders if the first time I was, wasn't some kind of mistake. Sure the story has gotten some good reviews but is that just because the story can touch home or is it because it is written well?

See the weird thing is, and I am going to come off sounding like a cocky dick here, I know I can tell a story. There have been far to many people in my life tell me that I come up with some awesome ideas. So I don't worry so much about the story as I do the way that it's told. I can't help but think the one thing I have published could have been written better. It more like, I don't know, I reread it after I received the hard copy. There just seemed like there should have been more there. That something was missing. To me it might lend itself to the lack of grammatical skills I have.

Maybe it's an writer thing, I've heard tails of writers never being finished with their stories. The problem there is all stories must come to an end. I understand that, but even as a child I could not except such a fact. The credits would roll and I was always wondering what was to happen next.

Some people have told me that I just need to shut up and be happy I was even published. Trust me I am very happy, should I post the pictures of the day I got the hard copy in the mail? I'm not trying to nitpick, I'm just terrified that this dream I have had all my life will come crashing down right as I get started. See the thing most people don't know is that writing used to be a secret passion. I might have said it on here before in which case I guess anyone that read it knows. See for one reason or another when I was young I could not admit that I enjoyed something or wanted to do something. Still like that now, so to admit and work at writing only to fail is extra scary.

I'm not looking for fame here. If I happen to get that then wonderful, but I'd be just fine being that guy that puts out books you may or may not know. Oh and make a bit of a living off it. That's all.

What I do know is that this fear is keeping me from doing what I want to do. I have started on so many projects only to pass working on them out of fear. What if I put all that time into it and it sucks? It just seems this fear should be gone. It seems like getting published should have been that kick in the balls that told me that I can do this.

So I think the main thing is my education, so I am going to go back to school. Take a writing class better my grammar and write something so kick ass it might just kill me. I'm sure that will be what will remove that fear I have. At least I hope it does. There is always the fact it could be a writers thing.

Thursday, July 14, 2011

Hello again my good friends. Why am I in such a good mood? Well I've decided to let you all in on a little secret, the secret many "writers" don't want you to know because if normal folks like you even knew one part of it you'd out write them in a heart beat. But first you must give me some money, you know make an investment so that you can make more money. But first before you give me your money, don’t give your money to me or anyone else that will tell you that they can help you get published.

Alright so even though I have only been published once and no idea if the book I have sent out will ever see print, people still ask me what is my secret. Truth is I don't think people want to know the real answer. Because the real answer is the most obvious and yet the one that requires the most work.

Why is it that most people seem to not want to hear the truth? You’ll find this in other places and not just in writing. Everywhere there is a simple answer people want something even simpler. On a grand scale people think that everyone has a secret for what they do, love, work and play. Fact is if you want to know how to be a good lover, you need to love, to be a good worker, you need to work and to play, you need to play. It takes time to do things right and that’s why to become a better writer, you guessed it you need to write.

I’m not the one that should be getting asked these types of questions, I have only one little story published. So, if people are still going to ask, I have to tell them what I know. Even big name writers will tell you the same thing, write more if you want to be a good writer. I bring this up, because more often or not when I tell people it’s just that simple, they will then point out that I am just starting out myself and they really should have asked someone else.

So instead people will turn to crappy writing programs and spend lots of money to do something they are already doing for free. I don’t know if they fully understand how hard this simple answer really is. Like I pointed out, it’s the same as every thing else in life, you must do to get better at it.

I think maybe they think there is more to the issue then just doing what they need to be doing. Maybe it’s a way so they can fool themselves into thinking that they are working on doing something with no intention of doing it. Kind of like someone who will ask you if you need help, and they really don’t plan on helping you. It’s more or less just a way so they can say they offered. I feel a lot of people who ask about the secret of writing don’t really want to write, they just want to make it seem like they want to. Make it seem like they tried. I hope none of you reading this are like that, but if you are, you might just need to find something else.

Then there are people who think everything is done with hard work. Writing is harder then most people will think and all it is, is just putting words to the page. But you work your mind in such a way, you can walk away from a computer feeling as if you ran a few miles. I don’t know how it works that way but it does. Maybe it comes from putting all the emotions into it, I really don’t know.

So there you have it and maybe even have your money in your pockets. So don’t run out spending lots of money on how to write. Writing is writing. I also would say don’t spend much on becoming a better organized writer. I’d say reading, Stephen King’s, On Writing, is a very good book to help you. It will tell you how to find your voice and how to sit down and work on writing, by writing.

Saturday, June 25, 2011

So I’ve not blogged in over a week, not something I wanted to let happen. If you have followed anything I have ever done then you know if I let things get away from me it can go on forever. Just ask the fans of Among the Dead, these people are some dedicated and patient people. They never really ask me to put out new episodes, they just wait. Then when I have made them wait for almost a year, they ask if I plan on making new ones, always in such a nice way. Sadly it seems that AtD might be dead as far as the podcast goes. There might be a book someday and then all the audio on a nice CD set with a booklet or scripts. Scripts would be shitty though, I stopped using scripts after the first, twenty episodes. Yeah…

Well lets get into what I have been doing other then blogging. In short, everything but writing. Like I said last time I would write about how I don’t write. Now if I say I haven’t written anything at all, it would be a lie, I have written a little on two books, one zombie and the other not and then started working on the idea of a non fiction book. Yeah, that last one is a little weird and we’ll see how that turns out. I’ve given myself less then five months to have the first two books written and then the non fiction on I’ve given myself two years. So yeah, I have done some writing, but not anywhere as much as I would like or I should.

I’ve been fishing and watching my nephews and my niece. These are about the same, can be fun at times and then annoying as hell others. Trust me the fun times out weigh the annoying. If not, then I wouldn’t do both and I wouldn’t love both either. The kids are just the coolest and the boys are five and they are so damn smart and just full of questions about life. I hope that no one ever shuts them up and they can just keep asking away.

I have also almost died a few times. One way would have been from sunburns. Yeah who knew you could die from them, but I almost did it. The other, I almost died from overdosing my self on my heart meds. Took them too close together and one thing led to another, I almost stopped my heart.

See, I haven’t written as much as I should have. In fact right now, I find myself not wanting to write anymore, I just want to sleep. I haven’t had rest yet. But one thing I am sure of is that I will not let the ext few times I am off work go in vain, I will be writing, on one of the three books and even this blog. I just feel like I have to admit that I have been letting myself slack. So here is for next time and maybe something better then a personal update.

Sunday, June 12, 2011

There are two types of people in this world, as a many adages go, but I have figured it out, there really are two types of people in this world.

Those of us that live in reality and those of us that live in imagination.

Let that sink in for a moment and you may understand it without having to read another word. And honestly, I don’t know if any truer words have ever come from my brain (not that I’m bragging or anything, I’m sure as will all things someone else has thought this already…). So I’ll brake this down, more so seeing that I was just going to tweet this and now I am making a blog post out of it.

See those of us who live in reality, as few as we are, see the world for what it truly is and understands our place in the world pretty much even if we feel lost at times. Sure we dream, have hopes and ambitions, but we understand that to see these things come to fruition that we must work hard for them.

Those of us who live in our imaginations, as few of us as it seems to be, see that the world works for us and us alone. Horrible things happen, to teach us a lesson, whether it happens directly to us or not. We think the world owes us something and that we don’t need to work for it to obtain it, if it’s meant to be it’s meant to be. Sure we can say we have to work for things but we really think it will all work out in the end for us.

Getting where I am going with this?

The thing is people can’t say they fall between these two thoughts. The fact is, if you think you fall between both then you’re living in your own imagination. Why would that be? You are trying to make the world work for you, by saying you fall in the middle, so when the situation arises you can be on the right side.

Let’s look at this even closer. People who live in reality can not become people who live in imagination. Yet, people who live in imagination can become people who live in reality. We are all born into imagination and it requires the right mindset and events for us to move into reality. Reality can come at any age, you don’t have to be an adult to view the world this way. Understand age really has nothing to do with this, neither does maturity, even thought maturity can reflect on this a lot. An immature person can live in reality just as much as a mature person can live in imagination.

People in reality may even long to live in that imagination, but despite what they wont they can’t make it. That’s why I think a lot of people who live in reality use their imaginations a lot.

Gasp, imaginations being used by people who live in reality that, that, that’s just confusing for dumb people.

That may be, but most people who live in imagination don’t use theirs at all.

Gasp again, but how can that be if they live in their imaginations?

Well, they have wasted their imaginations on making up a world for themselves. When you view the world/life as reality then you’re not wasting your imagination on that vast scale, so you can make up stories and hold on to something that most of the world loses, imagination.

That’s why I think that most writers of fiction view the world in reality. We can spend all day daydreaming about zombies taking over the world, or dolphins growing legs and arms, then waging war on man kind. We understand reality sucks and that there is nothing we can do about it, so we make fake ones. Sure people like me, make those worlds all full of suck also, but it’s controlled suck. I think even thought we can see the suck in the world, we still find it a beautiful place.

Those who live in their imaginations, have no need to make up a world on paper (computer screens), they think they are the cure, whether they come out and say it or not. See living in your imagination my seem like you’re living in reality. I knew a guy who because things worked out for him a lot he lived in his imagination. To him it was reality, to everyone else it was just sad. There is another part of people who live in their imaginations that I haven’t come right out and said, it’s kind of a big thing and adds more to the confusion of things.

People living in their imaginations think everyone else(who doesn’t agree with you) is wrong.

Now this, isn’t a part of how to identify where you fall in this thing, no not at all. This is just to point out how close these two fields may seem to be. I mean I guess I could word it this way for people living in reality:

People living in reality knows everyone else is wrong.

But that in and of itself is a false statement. Even people who live in reality can still be wrong about things. So this is maybe where the thin line comes into play for some people. So I have come to point of saying it like this.

Reality = everyone else may be wrong because of something real.

Imagination= everyone else may be wrong because, just because.

Before I go on, I say both groups say everyone, because I think it’s human nature to harbor doubt to another person. It’s a survival tactic, you really can’t trust everyone.

Most people living in imagination use ‘just because’ as an answer to all disagreements. Even if they say they have things to back it up, most of the time it’s nothing real. Such as, it’s true because “I read it on such and such website” or “so and so told me.” It can be an outright lie, or just willful ignorance. It’s hard to say. Either way there is nothing real to back them up. (understand jokes do not count in this, both groups of people can tell jokes and a joke about hearing something from someone, doesn’t mean a person is one way or the other. Same goes for lies. Jokes and lies seem to have their own thin line, but that’s subject for another blog post).

Also before I end this thing I want to clear up a few things.

First, if I have made any correlation between intelligences and the lack there of with either fields, I didn’t mean to. I don’t think intelligences aids one way or the other. I think a very dumb person could view things as reality, while a very smart person views things in the imagination. In fact I say it happens this way more often then not. Lots of the intelligent people I know seem to think way to highly of themselves, on the level of super genius. Less intelligent people seem to know their limit a little more.

Second, I also do not mean that all intelligent people live in their imaginations. To clarify, if you know your own intellectual limit then you’re safe. Oh wait, a better way to put it is, a can’t be beat attitude is the attitude of someone living in their imagination.

Third, political stance has nothing to do with this either. Despite the fact that one side might have more of one then the other, I think that both sides have too many people living in their imaginations to say that either democrats or republicans are dependable.

So yeah, this is just something I was thinking about today while I was at work. Dealt with a lot of shit and heard a lot of it myself. I think my next blog post will be about how, I could write a book on how to avoid writing but it would never get written. Because all I have done is brain storm and let outside events force me not to write. So I hope this post made sense and doesn’t seem like a jumble of nonsense. I also hope it made you think, it's had me thinking all day.

Friday, June 10, 2011

So I bought myself a new phone. An android phone, in fact I am typing this blog post on the phone right now. Why? To test it out. So far I have had the phone for a week and I love it. It came with an app that lets me work on word docs. Yes, I can type out ideas almost anywhere I'd like too. This by far make the phone worth it. Seeing as I have written the first chapter of a book on my phone, when the idea on how to start the damn thing out, hit me.

I think the one thing that bugs me is there is no way to know if I misspell something. It's a good thing also, it forces me to focus harder on what I am typing.

It's by no means a replacement for a computer, but it's nice to get my ideas out when,they are fresh. Well I have to get back to work.

Tuesday, May 31, 2011

Well it’s been too long since I last did a blog post. I’ve been busy as hell lately and haven’t had the time to really to any thing fun. Even when I am working I am working on other things, like solving global warming, or rather the melting icecaps. Yes I figured out how to end the melting icecaps while I was at work. Lets get started on this craziness.

Q. First who are the people that bitch about the icecaps the most?

A. Rich people, actors and Al Gore.

Q. What do all people on earth need in order to survive?

A. Water! Duh.

Q. How to most people drink water now?

A. From bottles!

Q. So, what do rich people who drink bottled water have to do with it?

A. They drink expensive bottled water and some of the most expensive bottled water is-- Glacier Water!!!

See all the rich people of the world drinking their, glacier water is shrinking the damn ice caps. So they come up with these crazy campaigns telling us, the poor and meddle class, it’s our fault. Yet they keep drinking their water and keep and the caps keep melting.

To fix the problem is to stop these rich sumbitches from drinking the damn water. To do that we have to stop making plastic and glass bottles, so rich people who want to drink glacier water have to find a damn glacier and lick it.

I’m just messing around ,and for the record, I am one of the people who thinks global warming is bullshit. I could really go into why I think it’s bullshit, but I don’t want to. I will how ever point out that there are other studies that show that it is. For years I believed it was due to global shifting. At least that’s what I said in high school and I still don’t know the real name for this theory. Trust me, I was happy to find other people who thought the same thing. It deals with the earth rotating very slowly end over end. It’s weird, but there is science behind it.

There is also the studies that show that the earth was always hotter then we know it and has been heating up since the last ice age ended. There have since then been a few mini-ice ages, as some people call them and that has helped keep us humans alive. So in theory, to help keep humans alive longer we need to be a bit further away from the sun or have another ice age… or a mini one, seeing that we are used to having it our way.

Thing is I fall between the two ways of thinking, because there is stronger evidence behind these two theories then there is for the current media driven one. Not that I really care either way, if it is due to people then we are too set in our ways to change. I can’t help but think that people only want to blame the human race for what ever it is, as a way of trying to keep hope that there might still be a way to prevent it. Because lets face it, we can’t stop nature, but we can stop people. So by making it human error we think we can still fix it.

So, yeah, I wasn’t really going to be going into a lot of this. I just wanted to type about something. I have lots of things I need to get back to doing. Writing, drawing, panting and working. As far as the next book I will be working on goes, I have the outline written out. I don’t know how I feel about the timeline or the ending, but these are factors I feel will fix themselves when I am writing the damn thing. I may think I know who the main character is now, but betting him to the page may show me something I didn’t see before. So long for now folks!

Wednesday, May 25, 2011

Well the world didn't end and now I am working on a new book. So my math was off, 2 + 2 = nothing, because numbers are an illusion to give us feeble mortals a method of keeping track of other illusions and the robots have yet to let us awaken from our sleep, to see the true nature of, um, nature.

So as I embark on writing another book, as always my mind thinks back to ‘07 when I wrote my first book. I had started in late April of that year and it took until late June or early July to finish it. At the time I thought it was the greatest thing I had ever done, all 94,530 words of it. Sadly it still remains the longest thing I have ever written, but also, what I think of as the most piss poor thing I had ever written.

Yet, as someone who longs for their first love and wonders what could have been. I too long for this story and wonder the what could have been. I sit down to edit it at times wondering if I can salvage the story, or even make a story out of it. During writing I changed all most all the original ideas I had had about the book, I took the dark ending and lightened it up, I even rushed the ending so as to keep people interested. I had a weird idea about the zombies that I only hinted at and would elaborate on more if the book did well and I wrote a second one. I had crazy things in it such a girl on girl rape and a revenge rape with a gun. So yeah, sounds like I may have been on drugs(I wasn‘t). I recall I killed a character off with out even saying how, he was just dead, turned into a zombie and a few miles away from where he originally had been.

Even taught I don’t think that book will ever see the light of day, it did teach me something: It takes time to write a book. Before that I never once thought it would take so long to write a book, in it’s first draft. It also taught how to set up goals when writing. When I wrote that book every night I made sure I would write at the very least 2,000 words. Sure some nights I would let myself get by with being short a few hundred words, but not much and I would always try to make that up the next day. I only took two days off from writing at that time.

So what happens now? Well much like that book and it’s plot jumping around I am going to jump to another subject in this post that has come to mind. See during writing this I looked up my very old writing blog, to make sure I had the year right. Despite having lots of stuff to say on that blog, most of it is very poorly spelled. Worse then what your seeing here. That’s one reason I will not go through and try to edit my first book, so many horrid spelling errors. Yet I’ll still work on the short stories I wrote from around that time, like Rude. They are short and the editing can be done fast and not remind me of how much of a moron I am.

The thing I want to now talk about and what I think I wanted to talk about when I started this blog post, damn getting sidetracked, is spelling. As I have pointed out before, I didn’t receive the best education and I dropped out of college. My spelling is years behind what it should be and my grammar is also behind, but I don’t think as much as my spelling… Er, getting to the point now…

So how much does spelling play into writing?

It seems that there is two different schools of thought.

*Spelling is very important to writing, even if you have a great idea, you can kill it with your spelling.

*The idea, the story, is far more important then the spelling and grammar. That stuff is the job of the editor.

Right now I don’t really fall into either slot. Why? Well if you spell as bad as I do then you want to be in the second, but I am also aggravated when I read something full of errors. So I have yet to make up my mind. I guess I have to say I lean towards the second more, but I do think the writers need to do their damndest at making sure they don’t put the editor through hell.

Now let’s see if I can blow your minds, I am not going to name names, but these two schools come from two different big name writers. One I have had the chance to ask him directly his thoughts on the subject and the other I gathered from a book, about writing.

Thursday, May 19, 2011

Well this may be the last blog post I post. I’ve heard that the world is coming to an end on Saturday and well I have to be honest, I’m not prepared. I thought I would have had more time, now I sit with no money and two guns that need ammo. Yes, I need ammo. I have first aid kits, water, canned food and other such things, but no ammo. How could I have bought a new fishing reel, knowing that I would be calling on my marksmanship so soon?

Thing is, that crazy guy is right, the May 21 is the end. I know he is right because the CDC is getting us ready for zombies. Not that they think that zombies are really going to happen, they are just trying to get us ready for the end as well. There is an unspoken war going on right now, yes it’s real, Al Qaeda had dirty bombs set up by North Korea aimed at us, these dirty bombs will kill two-thirds the US populous.

I’m sorry to say on the 21st it will not be Jesus making his way through the clouds, but rather a disease ridden bomb aimed at your home town. Yet this isn’t the worst part, see the rest of the world is in on this as well. So to keep us from attacking back, China is deploying EMPs over all major cities of ours. This way we can’t launch nukes so easy and it’s also going to let this virus spread. Yes your car will not work and even if it did, the hospitals could not help you now. No power. With no power, people will riot. Bringing them out into the streets they will spared the virus much faster. At this point we will wish it was zombies we had to fight off, not living humans. Scared and sick living humans.

The thing is not all of our nuking will be put to an end by the EMPs. No, we can launch some still yet, but they will not hit their targets. Thus setting off a world war that will only last the matter of a few hours, as more nukes and other dirty bombs are dropped worldwide. At this point I am not above saying that all this mixture of viruses, bacteria and radiation will ultimately make a zombie like creature somewhere in the world. The good thing is we wouldn’t have to worry about nuclear winter, seeing that as of right now more and more scientists are disproving this old train of thought.

Now, if your lucky to be alive after the short war, there is another thing we may have to worry about. All this surface activity may cause the plates to shift and thus set off volcanoes and earthquakes. The last of the lucky will die during these events, because the earth will shift even more. The world will be pushed a few inches away from the sun, making it a colder place to live. The rotation will slow down, our days will have 32 hours in them rather then 24. This will be hard on those who are alive, as their mental state will start to slip. I think lots of people will kill themselves at this time. The world will only have a handful of people left on each of it’s landmasses.

The world as we know it, will no longer be. I’m sure in time humans will die out due to the high levels of radiation. Still I wish I had some Ammo. It sounds like it’s gonna be one hell of a show.

*You may be asking yourself how do I know all this for sure, I did the math: 2 + 2 = end of humanity.

Saturday, May 14, 2011

Fellow eastern Kentuckian and zombie writer, Jason Thacker, is getting published… Again. Being a Kentuckian or a zombie writer as well, I feel the need to post about this news. He isn’t just getting a short story published, but a few novel. A zombie novel by the name of ’Dead are Alive’-- here is his blog post here.

First of I want to congratulate him. Not that I am sure that he reads my blog, but that is what twitter is for, but this is covering my butt on here as well. I have to say I plan on getting this book when it comes out, not because he is from Kentucky or that it has zombies, well yeah the zombies but not on the zombies alone. I think it’s good to support authors from your local area, but seeing as I am poor, I have to be picking about who I support. Thing is, I was published alongside Jason in ‘First Time Dead 2’ with the story the ‘Hungriest Zombie’. Which is one of the stories I really enjoyed and I enjoyed the story before finding out he is from only a few miles away from me. It’s corky, well written, has heart and had me pulled in. So yeah, I am going to read more of his stuff, also it’s a zombie western. Which is just kick ass. I have loved the idea of zombies and westerns for some time now, well after playing ’Gun’ For the Gamecube a few years ago. In fact I have wanted to write a zombie western type thing before.

So to make this post a bit longer, I want to touch on something that seems to happen to all writers at some point, an idea being used before you get the chance to do it yourself. Some get mad, some even go as far as violence (verbal mostly) and some, like myself, just try to deal with it. But dealing with it is hard. It’s hard because there isn’t much you can do. Lets list the options to an author in this situation.

Toss out the idea, so no one will think you’re a copycat.

Write the damn thing and get called a copycat.

Now I know that list is long and you may need to sit and let this news sink in for a moment, but we must push forward here. So as you see there isn’t much you can do, and either way your getting called a copycat. Yeah, I know I said you could toss it out so people wont call you a copy cat, but if you ever repeat your idea, people will say you just stole it or wanted to cash in on it. I once had the idea of superheroes during a zombie filled post apocalyptic world. I assume, unless I don’t make it as a zombie writer and a writer of other fiction, that you know there are tons of zombie superhero type things out there. So for the sake of this lets say I do go with writing this idea. Well there is a long list of things to pick form here.

Read the subject, so if my idea close to it I can plead ignorance.

Read it and change my ideas biased on what was done before as to not repeat.

Read it and give up if it’s too good.

Read it and think you can do better.

Not read it as to not let it influence you in any way.

Not read it so you truly are ignorant to the “original”.

Not read it so you don’t give up on the idea.

So yeah, that list is a bit longer then the other and the fact is it feels way longer when your in the situation. In fact both list feel longer when your in the situation. Truth is I don’t think there is a right or wrong answer. I’m sure there are people out there that think there is a right answer, but let them think that. I’m sure they may have been in the situation before and went with an idea they didn’t care much about and must support their decision. I say, bah to that. I don’t think there is much wrong with backing out of things, but at least admit it.

Then again, there is a lot of bravery to push forward. Or arrogance. See it never ends, so I say go with it. People will think what they think and you can only do what you can do. In the end if no one sues you, or uses some sort of violence on you then your in the clear. Critics seem to hate things anymore when it comes to movies and books, so as long as you don’t think you can’t write no bad, then just go with it. Either it will suck or it won’t.

Long story short, Jason broke past this, from what I understand and stuck it out. Now he has a book coming out. Writers should all take note of it. I hope the book does well.

Side note, sorry if parts of this seem weird, I’ve been watching Bones while writing this. I really need to try reading some of those books.

Wednesday, May 11, 2011

There are a few reasons I hate working. One being that I don’t have time to write when the ideas strike me. Today I was stacking tons of Gatorade and organizing a really messing aisle and came up with an idea for a post apocalyptic story. Whether it be a short story or full novel, I don’t know. So I just noted the idea and went on working. Then the need hit me. The need to write. From that idea to other ideas I have been thinking about for a long time, I just wanted to type something out and sit locked to the keyboard hours on end locked in a battle of words and ideas.

See the thing is, if I don’t act on that feeling right away I miss out on so much. The main thing I miss out on is the drive. Let me elaborate about it. See if I can write when I get this feeling to write, then I get the drive. What the drive is when I can’t stop myself from writing. Now this can last anywhere from a few days to a few months. Two ways it works, either I wake and write or I write before I sleep. Either way, it’s fun as hell and it makes me crazy. Honestly I wish writing was that easy all the time.

I know a lot of people think writing is hard because of the lack of ideas. That’s just not that case for me. I don’t mean to brag but it’s not. I have tons of ideas, it’s just figuring out a way to make them work. I have an alien story in mind, it’s been there for about three months now. I have more zombie stories then I’d care to think about. I have a ghost story in mind and tons more stuff just locked away. I just haven’t had the drive. Not that I can’t write without the drive, it’s just more fun to write with the drive. I’m a man of quick results and when I am working with a speed much faster then my normal speed then I get results even quicker.

Also the drive helps with depression, better then Prozac did. Yes, the drive feels wonderful and though it keeps me up, when I sleep I feel rested. It’s truly the best.

Now that I know all of you are just wondering how the Gatorade went, it went well. I even got praise for it. I’m almost sure they have to praise me, but despite that I think it looked good when I was finished.

Saturday, May 7, 2011

Well it seems work gets right in the way of blogging and most other things. Like staying up, yeah I don’t get to stay up late anymore, I head to be around eight. Eight, I haven’t gone to bed at eight sense I well was eight. So there is a lot of things that I have wanted to blog about, but just haven’t had the time to do so. Also I don’t know if I can do at work stories or not. So for now I’ll just stick with what I am sure I can talk about.

So I was out the other day, just looking at food, when one of those weird human traffic jam things happen. You know, when the aisle is empty and then suddenly it’s filled up, traffic coming from both ends. Well I am trying to keep myself out of the way, sense I am just looking. I’m facing the shelf and behind me to my right is an older couple looking for something or other and they just can’t seem to find it. Behind me and to the left is a man looking at an assortment of thing. Seems to me that he is doing much like myself just looking. Then suddenly there is this guy, mid-forties or so comes racing down the aisle, darts between the guy to my left and myself. No he stops right behind me. Standing there making noses. So I move over a bit thinking I didn’t give him enough room to get through. He starts yelling-

“MOVE! MOVE! MOVE!” At the older couple.

Now my back is to them, so I can’t see them all to clear. But I can see the older man just glare at this guy and then go back to looking for what ever it is they are looking for. So the yelling keeps going on. Until the guy to my left stops him and tells him that he is being rude. The rude guy then says in a slurred, man child voice.

“I’m retarded, I can’t help it.”

Thus people move out of his way as he races on through the store. So here is the thing, I don’t believe for one second that that man had any mental disorders other then being a moron. In fact this is behavior that I see a lot as of late (last year or so) when ever I go out. Now I have been around severely mentally challenged people before, ones who would act like that, but other people had put them up to it. The fact is they don’t seem to know they have a problem. But it seems that there is a new breed of suddenly retarded people cropping up every where.

By that I mean, I have seen these people out for years, they act like nothing is wrong. They talk normal, they are a bit of assholes. But for the most part they seem mentally fine. In fact I worked at a restaurant and some of them would come in, pissed about the price of the food and pissed they could not buy food with their food stamps. Again, not making fun of people who get food stamps, I understand the importance of this government service. Normal assholes, suddenly acting like they are shitting themselves challenged. Also, the wife and I was out eating when I saw the food stamp guy, he was shitting on himself.

Anyway, my point is I think most of these people watched the same 20/20 special, about how this guy pretended to have a mental illness from a work related injury and had it last for about two years or longer, I don’t recall. So my best guess is that they either want more movement money or they just want to be rude to people and get away with it.

Now I know some of you might be thinking, how can I be so cruel, people with mental illnesses can’t help it and I’m not a doctor who can tell if these people are truly ill or not. True statements, but I have to work with my gut on this one.

So to finish the story off, as I was leaving the store there also was mister rude, who walked to a car, cell phone in one hand, a bag in the other. Opened the door, pulled the seat forward, put the bags in the back seat, put the seat up right, got in and buckled up and then drove off. No other people with him.

So you could walk away from this and say that I was wrong, if you want to. But as far as a sudden outbreak of mental illness attacking only a select few people who happened to have been rude assholes to begin with, seems like fiction to me.

Monday, May 2, 2011

So I start work at Wal~Mart tomorrow. It’s some what of a depressing idea to be heading back to work, but all in all I know I’ll grow used to the idea sooner or later. I also woke this morning to find I have been sent a rejection letter, or rather a disqualification letter about a short story I had submitted a few weeks back. It was disqualified for a rape scene that takes place in the story. At first I was taken aback at this statement, I had recalled in the guidelines for submission that “we could let our sick little minds run wild” or something along the line to that. So I checked out the guidelines again only to see the part that I saw every time I have looked at those guidelines yet somehow kept over looking. “Keep it R-rated”.

Now I know what your saying, there is rape in R rated movies. That is true, but the rape in my story is like that you would find in the unrated dvd of the movie. It’s a very violent rape that implements using the woman’s own blood as lubrication. I let my sick little mind run wild and I didn’t spare the details. Maybe had I not gone into many details about the act, it could have went on to be my second story in print. Sadly I fear that I may have made a bad impression on the publisher, I don’t know and I too much of a chicken shit to just come out and ask. I’d be willing to remove the rape form the story, or at the very least just imply a very gruesome rape had happened.

Anyway, I will get onto the subject that I wish to cover in this post. People getting angry at publisher for rejecting them. See I never understood that, I have always taken rejection as a good thing, a thing that lets you know what areas that need improvement. Like with my rejection today, it was my fault, I wrote that story just for that anthology, I should have followed all the guidelines. What did I learn this time around? Follow the fucking guidelines better next time. I have no desire to send the publisher upset e-mails, telling them that they are wrong and I am right type of deal. What is the point of that?

I’ll admit there was one publisher that I, to this day stay mad at, because of their rejection letter. Out of all the people that ever rejected me this publisher sat out to not be helpful at all in their rejection, but to be as harmful as they could be. From calling me retarded to saying that my parents must have been morons for letting me think that I could ever write. Now a letter like this, I can understand getting upset at. I just never told them to fuck off like I should have. In the end I feel I give them the best fuck off that I could, I don’t even let people know the name of their small publication. With no word to mouth, and their higher then you rejections, they will not be around much longer.

As far as a normal rejection goes, I have never had a problem and I don’t see why other people do. In my mind you should always be nice to publishers, I mean if you’re to much of an ass to them they might just remember your name and pass you up the next time you try with them.

It really does bum me out that I didn’t make it in the book. I mean it is going to have the most kick ass cover art also. That’s just the way life is and the way the writing world works. You can either learn from it or let it destroy you.

Sunday, May 1, 2011

So now I have a job. Reason of me not working much over the last two years is stuff to do with a bad heart. No real point into getting into details, just I got sick of sitting around, I need to live a little. Also I am tried of being fat over the issue. I had lots so much weight before I found out I was sick. I was almost down to my weight I was when I was in high school. Which is something I have been seeing a lot lately, how small I was when I was in high school. That’s because I have been going through lots of old things. Ah, see what I did there, I just segued into the topic I have been wanting to talk about for days.

So many things I can go on about, laugh about and cry about. Stuff mostly from just a little over five years ago, but some over ten years. Like when I was trying to make comics for my friends when I started college, just like for shits and giggles. No one really liked this one.

Yeah, seems a little tasteless. I mean I used all two of my brain cells to think this sumbitch up. So yeah, lots of old pictures and lots of old ideas. Ideas, that oddly enough still linger in the back of my mind. Old letters and pomes, old letters and pomes that put pride into my ego. What I mean about that is that all the hard work I have done to educate myself after high school shows strongly. I mean there are things that I now have trouble reading, because all the misspelled words. I should scan some of it and upload it up here, but due to embracement and laziness I wont do so.

See after high school and sometime after dropping out of college is when I decided that I would go through with trying to achieve my secret dream, writing. Why I kept that dream secret I don’t really know, I guess fear of failure. So I increased my reading and started giving myself spelling words. Yeah, I gave myself spelling words and every three days a spelling test. This too I kept private, I think maybe my dad had woken up one night and saw me doing my test on the computer. He may have been the only person to know at the time. I’m sure before that they all thought I was on the computer all night looking at porn or something, nope just learning. To this day I am still working on my grammar and to keep in mind that grammar isn’t spelled grammor…

I think the message I want to leave behind after I die is, just work at it and you can go far. I don’t know if I will go far, but I have made a big step in learning that you can’t just not help yourself. There is no guarantee that the education your getting or are going to get (for my readers under the age of four) is much of an education. I wish I would have thought about teaching myself spelling while I was still in school. I wish I could have shoved it into the faces of the teachers that told me I lacked any ability to learn. Only thing is I feel they would want to take credit for pushing me to learn rather then excepting that I chose to learn because what I wanted out of life required that. Just like when I really focused on learning to read in the seventh grade, because I wanted more out of my video games, mainly Resident Evil. Tasty zombies.

Thursday, April 28, 2011

I write this as my wife is asleep. I just woke up myself, after sleeping for 13 hours. I wish that lead to me feeling well rested but it doesn’t. I’m not here to talk about the sleep I had or the rather weird dreams I had while out of it. I feel guilty. Before I tell you why I feel guilty, let me tell you a little about yesterday.

See the wife and I had some places to be early in the morning. So we ran around and got those things done, then had a big cheap breakfast at DQ and I wanted to walk around for a bit to get the food to settle down. I like to walk after eating a big meal. So I drove us to a plaza with a Wal-Mart and other stores in it, to make a long story short we went to a Dollar Tree and they had some books there, for a dollar. The one I picked up was a book about Scott Adams. Only for me to get home and pass out.

So in the last hour I read only two pages of the book. Could have read more, but something was bugging me, why had Scott Adams been in the news recently. I saw his name trending on Twitter and Yahoo but never once stopped to check it out. I was getting a sneaking suspicion it had to do with bragging about himself. Why? Well the first two pages so far is about how he had always been successful. So I looked up the news article and it turns out I was half way right. The other half was him saying something some would consider “sexually insensitive”, I’m not going to toss my hat into that ring, because I have read only one part of it and out of context.

So we get to the part that makes me feel guilty. He talked about his high IQ and the writer of the article says that in and of itself is a big no-no. My mind raced back to my last blog entry and I faced palmed mentally. Then I read that he thought that people that didn’t “get” what he was saying where just too stupid. So some of the guilt was lifted. When people don’t get what I am saying, it’s either that my fault or they have different views.

May I put one thing straight with you all? In the post before I wasn’t saying I had a high IQ to down anyone. I was saying it because I feel that there were other people deemed dumb by the school system who also may have had a high IQ. Also when I talk about that point in my life I feel the need to defend my intelligence. Understand, it has always been something put under the microscope.

I’m left wondering if I am even going to finish the book now or if I wasted a buck. I can’t stand people who think they are to smart for life and all those who oppose them are dumb as a sack of foul excretions. No matter how successful they are. So as far as reading this thing goes, I guess I will give it another try, but soon as it ventures back into personal greatness land, it’s going back on the shelf.

Still this isn’t what post I wanted to do for today. Nor have I caught up on the post I wish to do. It is rather early in the morning and I might just do another at some point today, but at the same time I am waiting to hear back about a job. I really don’t know how to keep a blog interesting. I’ve had people tell me that just as long as I am myself there will be people who find it interesting. Well I am myself and I don’t feel interesting at all. Not that I am fishing for someone to post on here that I am very interesting. I guess just all this time with myself I am board of myself.

It’s just I read other writers blogs and they are talking about writing and what not. I feel it’s wrong. I mean I have stuff out there in the world waiting to be judged by publishers and I don’t feel that it’s right to say anything. Not a moral right, but a made up legal right… Yeah I know it’s crazy, it feels like it’s illegal to talk about having stuff out there. Could be the years of singing confidentiality contracts at different jobs, could also be the track I have of talking a project to death.

See you will not find me talking about books and stories I am currently working on much. Sometimes I get so excited about an idea and then the next thing I know I have talked it to death. So the best way not to do that is to not talk about them as I am working on them, even to myself. Yes I have talked an idea to death with myself. I was in the shower when the idea passed away.

I will say this thought if your looking for writing news right now, I am waiting to hear back about one book I have written and one short story. The book is about zombies and the short story is about a serial killer. Oh and I have another short story that was rejected and I need to work on. Then tons, trust me here, tons of other projects. Not all just writing, podcast and animations as well.

So I will leave you all with a recent picture of me from my little sisters wedding. Why? Well for a writing blog I feel I have far to much text and not enough pictures. Thanks for reading!

Update: So I've read past the second page and I see where he was going with that. Lets see how the rest of the book is and I'll be sure to blog my thoughts and views on it. I just felt I should update you all on this fact. As a writer I should have known, don't judge when your only two pages in. So many books I've read had sucked for the first chapter or two and then picked up and become some of my favorites. As I recall when I first read Of Mice and Men I didn't care much for how the book started out, now it is one of my all time favorite books. So in my defense I'll admit I am not a morning person and I was trying to read this very first thing in the morning. Really I was, I picked it up after gathering myself from the weird dreams and flipped it open. Anyway I am going to get back to reading it.

Tuesday, April 26, 2011

So today I want to clear something up. Some are saying I shouldn’t be saying that all of eastern Kentucky has a bad educational system. That is true, I can’t vouch for ever school in eastern Kentucky, I can only speak on behave of my experience in the Martin county school system. I’ll go on and add that from what I understand that the rest of the school system isn’t that good either in eastern Kentucky. I guess though I am asking people who grew up poor.

See even when I was very young I saw the class system that was given to the students based on their parents. I grew up poor, so even though I had a high IQ I was cast into the pile of children they deemed worthless. It was just odd that the students that went into that pile came from poor homes. Hell most of us deemed to dumb to teach, would ride the same bus to the same government housing I grew up in. So we where over looked and when we needed help, most of the time, the teacher didn’t have time to help us. Though they could help the other kids, the ones that mommy and daddy would drive 35 miles to the closest McD’s at the time and then drive 35 miles back to drop them off lunch. The ones when a school project was do they had computers to do their work with. I didn’t even have a computer until I was in high school! October of ’01! This stuff I am talking about, is way back when I was in elementary school, so like 1993.

At one point we moved to Virginia, where I attended Spotswood Elementary school for a few months. Now this is how I knew something was wrong when I moved back to Kentucky. See out there, the teachers worked with me. In fact they worked harder with me because I was so far behind the other students and in a few short weeks, I was at the same level as the rest of the kids in my class (even doing better then some). Now this is around the time I first wanted to be a writer, or at the very least tell stories to other people in a written and at the time illustrated form.

I had a teacher out there who’s name I can’t recall, but I called her Mrs. Americas, but she was so nice. We had a computer class, we had a gym class that did things, like climb ropes, I was only got into trouble once out there and that was a miss understanding. There was a kid that reminded me of Mark Summers and thus I called him that. I was friends with a kid named Mario, which I thought was cool, because I loved Super Mario. I would ladder be made fun of by a teacher in Kentucky for being friends with him. Why? Because I had drawn a picture of us playing after I had moved back. I had missed Mario very much, in ways I think he may have been my first real friend. So when this teacher made fun of me for having a black friend, I was crushed…

See after going to Spotswood for that short time, coming back to Kentucky was a true horror. I didn’t like how the teachers didn’t want to help me and how they would blame it on the over crowded class rooms of 30 kids (I think my class in Virginia had 35 maybe 40). How, when I did better then the rest of the kids in my class, even the well to do kids, I was punished for it? Sent to the principle’s office or when I got to the third grade put in a little corner all by myself for the rest of the year. Two teacher made fun of me for being friends with kids who where not white. The one I said before and then another one when I was the only kid who would talk to the new/only black kid at the grade school… Sadly he didn’t stay around long enough for me to even lock his name into my memory. He lived in the same government housing as I did and people there didn’t take to kindly to color folks moving in…

Things only got worse and I wasn’t the only victim of the bad schools and the really bad teachers. Now I am not saying all the teachers where bad. In fact there are a few good ones that always come to mind, some I can recall on and it brings a tear to my eye at how much they helped me.

See when I started the fourth grade, I couldn’t do math past add and subtract. Like I said before my third grade year, I was put in a corner almost from the start of the year, then switched to another class that they said was the same grade level as me, but my sister was in there and she was and has always been a year behind me. So I didn’t learn a think in third grade, other then how to spell building. That word is what got me into dirt and put in the corner. I could spell it when the teacher niece could not. But I am getting a little side tracked here.

So when I started the fourth grade, no real math skills, they wanted to put me into special ed. No this wasn’t the short bus type, no this was for kids who couldn’t learn the why they wanted us to learn. So slow kids, or as I would come to call them in recent years, broken kids. There was just one thing, the first teacher in the special ed class sucked. She didn’t want to do a thing. Then they brought in a woman who, worked with me. I embraced it, when others didn’t. I knew to embrace that, that was the type of education I was starting to get at Spotswood. The other kids didn’t know how to deal with it, some would tell me that they didn’t feel right asking for help. So I took advantage of it even more. She would try to teach me to read, which I picked up on so fast, thanks to her help. She thought me not only how to multiply numbers, but also divide them, stuff that other fourth graders at the time didn‘t even know!

Then one day, she told us that she had to leave, that they where sending her to help some other kids, older kids that where not as good as us. She gave us all a brown paper bag full of candy, hugged us with tears in her eyes. That was the last I saw of her. The old teacher came back and the only think I learnt the rest of that year was New York’s York wasn’t spell Yourk. That was do to a computer game. So my mind was left to rot. What I learnt that year was all I really learnt until I was in the seventh grade, that’s when I found out that you could learn from home.

Now I know you might be thinking, how could my parents ever let the school put me in a slow class? Truth be told, they didn’t want to and if I recall right neither did the principle. It was my teachers that did and the teacher that tricked me into begging to be put in there at first. I had to stay after school for math tutoring, one day. I say one day, because she learned how to trick me that fast. She told me that the kids who went into special ed got to take cool field trips; filed trips to see dinosaur fossils. That perked my interest and what else pushed me was the big ass packet of dinosaur things she gave me. Books, a build your own paper dinosaur, a record with songs about dinosaurs and more! So I went home and begged to be put in there, not knowing it was going to be a trap until the day I graduated high school. I really was trapped. I tested out of Special ed three times, all three times they said I had cheated on the test because I got a perfect school.

This could be where my anger came from, who knows. I know I hit teachers after coming back to Kentucky, I tossed trash cans at them for saying mean things about Mario. Hell I tossed a desk at a teacher when she told me I was so stupid I didn’t know it(second grade). She told me that I would die underground digging for coal.

Well this isn’t really what I wanted to talk about today. Then again, I don’t know much about keeping a blog and what I should and shouldn’t be posting on here. Maybe you didn’t want to know about this part of my life. For that I am sorry. I just have to point out that when I say, Eastern Kentucky has shit for education, why I feel that way. My experience was bad and I know lots more people who where beaten down. In fact third grade was so bad, that when First Time Dead 2 was printed I wanted to ship a copy to the dumb ass teacher who stuck me in that corner and told me I wouldn’t amount to anything in my life. Only thing is, I don’t want to know if she is alive anymore. Once I stopped seeing her fat ass out in public a few years ago I enjoyed public places a lot better.

No I really wanted to talk about how I went through tons of stuff today(yesterday), that I hadn't in years. How I found the first chapter book I ever read, I was going to have nice pictures and everything. Now all I left you all with is a rant. There is always next time folks.

Monday, April 25, 2011

Hello out there, I’m David Maynard Jr. I’ve been told by my wife over and over for the last few months to make a blog. She goes on like:

“David you need a blog so you can keep people up to date on what you are doing.”

“David you need a website so you can keep people up to date on what you are doing.”

“Muffin Butt, you need a blog and website so you can keep people up to date on what you are doing.”

So I just look at here and tell her make me a fan page if you want. See I’ve done the blog thing before. Not my cup of tea. First off I never know what to talk about and I feel so egotistical for thinking that anyone would give two shits about what I have to say. Secondly I tend to, not have time for a blog. It may be I forget and never update, or just don’t update for some time and let it just sit. Trust me, type my name into google and search the annals of the internet and you’ll find a half a dozen blogs that I have started and never finished or kept up on. So that’s my list of reason… Well other then the fact I have such a shitty education that my spelling is horrific (keep this in mind). An Eastern Kentucky education is bad enough, a Martin County education is worse. So when it comes to typing up a blog, most of the time I like to do it fast. While the words are fresh in my mind, don’t think it over and post that sumbitch. See to me, and this could just be justifying laziness, I have no chance to censer myself this way. See if I do a blog I want my true self to be known. Like right now, I am thinking out each word as I type it into the word processor, where I may read back over it, correct errors and post it to the blog.

So, um, yeah.

I guess your starting to wonder why I have broken down to make this blog. Well something has come to my attention in the last year or so. That is people do care what I have to say, in a fictional sense. I’m a writer. Now recollect on the part I told you to keep in mind, now have a good laugh and let’s move on. I have a short story in one book. First Time Dead 2 (published by May December Publication ). My story is called Rude Awakening. Shockingly enough it has been getting some good reviews on this short little story and not just from friends and family. Strangers, people I don’t even know like my little story. So I hope to do more and not just short stories, but full length novels.

Also I do a podcast called Among the Dead. Now this is something I have been doing for a few years now off and on. It’s more of a hobby that people really enjoy. I write and voice act the zombie drama podcast. People from all over the world have contacted me and told me that they love it. And honestly it’s the fans that keep that one alive. That is also what keeps me from posting at time. I don’t want to disappoint. I don’t want to toss them another zombie clone.

So, here is the thing people like my fiction and I love that. I didn’t get by in school on looks or brains. I got by in school, because of no child left behind. Yet, the few times I was given a chance to show people what my imagination could do, teachers and peers alike enjoyed. I hope to do this for the rest of my life. I hope you will follow along-- Hell I hope there is something to follow along with. So if for some reason you want to be kept up to date on what I am doing, you found the spot. I’ll do my best to maintain this blog.